This is a rewrite of the "Existence, Reality & Spirituality" post. Hopefully it is more readable and clear this time.

Who are we? What are we? Why are we here? The search for meaning in our lives starts with these basic questions, usually as we start becoming an adult, and assuming the responsibility for our lives. As children, we look to our parents for guidance, but as we leave their care, we still look for guidance from a source higher (and presumably wiser) than ourselves. This desire draws many to religions, with faiths and beliefs in Gods, allowing the transfer of responsibility from self to a god, and trusting in that god to guide them. Yet for many, like myself, this remains unsatisfactory, as all we know of these gods are from musty books and calcified rituals. Therefore, the search continues.

One of the first quests in the journey to spirituality is determining if our spirits exist beyond our current day to day existence. Science, as wonderful as it is, only recently has developed the technology to start exploring our minds. However, it has discovered that many aspects of what we are, our personalities, memories, and talents are and can be affected by drugs, physical disorders, injuries, and disease.

This would lead one to believe that we are nothing more than a biological accident, that our thinking and awareness a side effect of evolution. However, science has been able to reach to the very edges of our universe. We can see and detect the smallest bits matter down to the probabilities of the quantum foam, to the furthest reaches of our universe. From the absolute zero of deep space to the fastest particles traveling at the speed of light.

When scientists attempted to reach deeper into the quantum theories, they discovered many odd things. Things that were not conventional. A common example of this is the property of light. Photons, a massless quantum particle. When it is observed one way, it behaves like a wave. When observed another way, it behaves like a particle. Only through the process of being observed by an aware observer was the nature of the photon changed.

Or rather, did it change? Our perception of the particle changed, and we saw it behave in a different manner. One that was measurable and distinct from it’s other form. Observed one way, it became a particle. Another way, it manifested as an energy wave. Through extensive experimentation, it has been determined that the act of observation, by an aware person, causes the change. An observer is needed to “Collapse the probability wave”. While we can do it, scientists have speculated that since there is much more going on that we can observe, there has to be another observer outside our system to “collapse the probability wave” of our universe. This is one example how our modern science makes a very strong case for spirituality.

Until we observe the particle, it exists as either/both a particle and a wave. It is in the flux of probability, requiring the intervention of a self-aware observer to bring it into our reality. Therefore, since our being aware, of having awareness, we have an effect on quantum particles. I feel it is conceivable then that our awareness has a quantum nature.

So what is a quantum nature. In the example above, we are not really changing the particle. The particle and the energy wave are theorized to be simply two different aspect of the same thing. It is our aware observation that causes how the quantum particle manifests itself within our existence.

Now how can the same thing be two different things? Science has a theory, again, that has been experimented with, and shown to be valid. It has been determined that our universe is greater than the four dimensions that we know. There are an estimated total of 10 to 26 dimensions to our universe, in which our space-time continuum represents only 4.

So having a quantum nature means that the particle, energy, and our awareness exist in more than just our 4 dimensions. While proof of this is highly unlikely, I’d like to offer a parallel that might support this.

Meditation. Meditation is used by many eastern cultures as a means to achieve enlightenment. To experience Brahman. To see one’s inner self. Meditation teaches the student to still all ones thoughts, and achieve a state that has no individuality, no emotion. No sense of self. A state that prevented even Buddha from being able to describe it’s nature.

How can we tell this is the right way? Perhaps we can’t. Not yet, anyway. But think of this. A photon travels at the speed of light. Due to Einstein and his theories of relativity, we know that anything that travels at the speed of light does not experience the passage of time or experiences the totality of it’s existence all at once.

We identify ourselves from point to point. I am me as I conceive these thoughts, and I am another me writing these thoughts down. I am not the same person, because that conception that I had changed my outlook on how the universe is. I have changed. Throughout my life I will go countless changes as I grow physically and mentally.

Now if I take all those versions of me, and experience them all at once, a loss of identity, of self, much like the experience of Brahman. You either become lost in the mishmash, or you see the distilled self. You only experience, or perceive that which does not change over all your experience. The Essence of self. That, I hypothesis, is the quantum nature of awareness. It is the window into our extradimensional selves.

What this means can be staggering. We, being aware, have an existence outside our known universe, and separate from our existence within our known universe. We only manifest within these dimensional walls when there is an environment that we can interface with… Our minds.

However, due to the nature of our space-time dimensions, we experience time, and become involved and interact with this existence. I feel it would be safe to say that most of us only become aware of our full existence in the universe when we cease to exist within this one.

Now, because awareness (usually unconscious awareness) extends beyond our space and time, should anyone learn to become aware of their superconscious (awareness beyond that of known existence) there seems to be the possibility that they could then experience, or transcend our known existence. This leads to the possibility of communication of others through this superconciousness.

What would be the consequences of this view?

Telepathic communication. Knowing about another person’s situation that is occurring far away, without any communication within our known existence. If quantum particles can do it, and they do, (this has been a proven scientific fact), then so can awareness be extended to interact with other awarenesses within our known existence. The failure, or rather difficultly to prove this is because of the subjectivity of one’s own awareness. It’s not something that we can objectify.

Departed Spirits: Since awareness exists beyond our known existence, then death simply releases an awareness from this existence. People with a sensitivity of their awareness may be able to sense them.

Spiritual Implications:

As matter, energy, and awareness are all interconnected, and that our existence is a manifestation of these energies, it would not be inappropriate to view this as a god. We are all one with it, it is all of us, it makes us what we are.

Does it have a personification? Does it have a purpose? Unknown, and probably ultimately unknowable except for those that achieve a full communion with their inner awareness. It could be that these concepts are not even applicable.

It is possible that there has been communication with spirits that do not have an existence within our known universe, and have provided a sort of moral or spiritual guidance. It is very likely, considering that so many faiths have so much in common in their core values (Love each other, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, Don’t stress over material things, you can’t take them with you anyway), that they may have had some common supernatural origin.